Interventi sul paesaggio. Il caso delle centrali idroelettriche di inizio Novecento in Italia

The first decades of the twentieth century are the protagonists of a rapid increase in interventions aimed at the energy structuring of the national territory. Identified the water as a useful resource for the production of electricity, works are carried out (such as dams, weirs, ducts, power stations) destined to irreversibly modify nature and the landscape. The paper intends to focus on the examination of some case studies such as the sequences of hydroelectric plants (1) on the banks of the Adda river, (2) in Val d’Ossola and (3) in Valtournenche. The paper will be focused not only on the moment of realization of the hydroelectric works and on the debate arising from their construction, but also on the initial deception characterising them: those interventions, which Ruskin would have abhorred because extremely impactful and that cleverly used the poetics of romanticism to convey their image, are now absorbed by the same landscapes they have modified, becoming themselves too the object of the protection advocated by Ruskin.